Geleeda

From Scarred Lands :: Scarn.com :: Wiki

Appearances

Queen Geleeda Appears in the Calastia book from Sword and Sorcery, the Wise and the Wicked, as well as an active character in the novel Shadow Dance

Queen Geleeda the Fair and King Virduk

"It is of course folly." Geleeda said, taking a grape from the silver dish and gently peeling the skin from the fruit with the razor sharp nail of her index finger. Virduk watched this seemingly absentminded talent of her's with more than a little interest.

"What is my dear?" Virduk asked his wife, Queen of Calistia.

"This invitation for alliance with the Charduni, they have no concept of the term. They see any country willing to align with them as simply too weak to stand on their own and therefore on the top of their list for conquering." She said, letting the skin of the grape fall to the floor before sucking the bare fruit into her mouth.

"Yes, yes, of course they do, and a wise foreign policy I might add as well." Virduk said, returning to his intelligence reports.

"Then why open ourselves to such rabble?" Geleeda asked, taking another grape from the tray. The green, translucent fruit so much like the color of her own eyes.

"Because, my dear, every nation in the past that has asked for such an allegiance was in fact ready for conquering. It takes that to even think about aligning yourself with such as they. That is the whole point. They will arrive over confident and ready to accept just about any arrangement I request, because they know that what ever the terms are, they are going to take over soon enough, and therefore, they will not actually be burdend by whatever agreement they make for very long." Virduk answered, watching her peel this grape as well. It was a fascinating process she used, but some how it was more than a grape when she did it.

"So you expect them to turn on you then." She said.

"Expect? No, I'm counting on it. I'm counting on the greed of those bastards to sit down and give me Hallow Faust, and as soon as they do, attack me with all their might and war machines."

"Sounds like a waste to me. Taking Hallow Faust ourselves will loose us less time and man power than taking on the Charduni afterwards." Geleeda said, washing her fingers in a small bowel of water and looking at him from her sofa.

"No, it won't. If I attack Hallow Faust directly, then Vesh, Mitheril and probably even those druids up in Ganjus will fall right down on me, just like they are going to do to the Charduni. Hell, even Burok Torn will probably send an army or two over there, just to even a few scores, only to come home with a basket or two more to settle." He said, with a light chuckle. "But the Charduni, with a few troops of our own will take that city and the secrets it keeps. I'll loose a few troops, the Charduni will loose a few armies and the city will fall." Virduk said and the held up a hand asking to be allowed to finish. Geleeda nodded.

"The Charduni will then attack here, in force, to take over Calista. We will, by some rather interesting maneuvering of armies and locations, be greatly out numbered, and will most likely fall in a season. Thus, Mithril, Vesh and those damn dwarves in Burok Torn will have no choice but to send down armies to our defense, thus saving me a great deal of effort, troops and time. Weakened by both of these encounters, the Charduni will have no choice but to retreat, right into the troops I 'didn't have' when the war started. I'll slaughter them before they ever reach their wall of bones. And then Dunahnae will be mine for the taking." He said, with a smile.

"Interesting plan to be sure, but what makes you sure that Mithril and Burok Torn will defend you? After all, they do consider you a monster." She said, but a small grin creased her lips, with something of admiration around the word 'monseter'.

"Because my dear, that is all I am, just a monster." He said, and laughed. "They wont' like it, and it may be at the very last minute they send their armies down here to protect our boarders, but their only other choice is to have Charduni as neighbors with a vast sea port, and access to their back door. They will send those troops because to not send them, is to sign their own deaths to the Charduni. I'll bet Burok Torn is the first to send those armies as well. Those dwarves can't see past their own beards."

Geleeda thought about this for a long time, and then said, "Not bad. I'll give you that, not bad at all, but just for argument's sake, a word game as it were, what if you are wrong, and they don't send the troops, or.. if they did what I would do, wait for you to fall and then send the troops to route out the Charduni before they had a good hold on the country. What then my dear?" She asked.

"You are as insightful as you are beautiful my love." Virduk said, "yes, that is precisely what I would do as well, and in fact have done in the past, as you well know. But let us leave aside Paladins and Dwarves standing by why helpless thousands get slaughtered in villages and cities all over my lands. Let's, as you say, play the word game and make them as practical as we are ourselves, then the Charduni are still between my main army here, and a larger one advancing on their rear. One they have no idea about. The will be cut off from supplies and reinforcements, and dead. Between those two heavy looses, they will be unable to mount an attack of any size, any time soon."

Geleeda bowed her head, "Bravo." she said, and stood. "It sounds like an excellent plan. Unless of course the Charduni find out about that hidden army of yours, and then the whole thing could backfire in your face." She walked slowly over to his desk, letting him get a very good look at her as she did so. "They could slaughter those troops on the desert floor, and punch right through our defenses here soon after."

"They could, but they won't." Virduk said, not lifting his eyes from the intelligence reports as she obviously wanted him too.

"And that would be because?" She asked, sitting on the edge of his desk, and leaning down to give him a very good view of her cleavage. After all, if she couldn't flirt with her own husband, who could she flirt with?

"Because, as you said before, the Charduni will be expecting a weak Calistia, not one capable of mounting such a counter attack on them. They are no long campaigners. They take the weak, and the feeble, and wait out the strong until such time as they become weak and feeble. They will go home, lick their wounds, raise their dead and wait for me to mis-step." He answered, still not lifting his eyes from the report in front of him.

Geleeda leaned back and looked at her husband. It was in fact a very good plan with very little chance of any failure befalling Calistia itself. He may not get all that he is after, but his only real goal was Hallow Fauts, and that would certainly fall and be his almost from the start. Dealing with the Charduni would probably be as simple as he just suggested. There would of course be a few skirmishes and boarder attacks from the Charduni, just to check the real strength of Calistia, but they would pass, in five or six years, with very little loss of any Calisian resources.

"Damn." Virduk suddenly hissed.

"What?"

"The troops in hiding were attacked by an unknown source yesterday. Half of the force is either wounded or dead." He said, leaning back in his chair, and rubbing his eyes. "Maybe I am loosing just a bit of my touch. What, or who, could have done this? Wasn't Charduni, we know that."

He poured himself a glass of wine and swirled it in the glass, without tasting it. "It took a full year to get those troops up there, and hidden away. Supply lines created to look like normal trading trains. A full year of work, smashed in one afternoon. If the Charduni didn't know about those troops before, they know about them now. Probably even have some of those men as slaves, the ones that scattered into the wilderness. They'll know everything before I reach Shelzar a week from now. "

"Orzu?" Geleeda asked, knowing that now was not the time to twist the knife, but that time would come soon enough.

"Always a possibility, but I doubt it. He would harass the army for several weeks before coming in hard like that. No, I think it was unexpected on both sides. Some army stumbling upon mine." He answered. and rubbed his eyes again. "Some force chasing something, remembering an underground cavern and attempting to get out of the sun, and wham!". he slapped the desk. "Doesn't even matter that they did that much damage, just the battle would have drawn attention to the area.

"What about Lilith? She could have gone in there for a roost, and got surprised. She can be very destructive when surprised." Geleeda asked.

"No, definitely not, she was here" he said, pointing at a spot just north and east of Geleeda's Woods. "fighting ogers and defending a group of traveling bards heading for the festival. I don't know why she was there, but that also means that her friend was in that area as well. They don't travel separately." He said.

"A third army then, something unexpected and unknown, but they don't describe it in this report?" She asked.

"No. The roof caved in soon after it started. Those that saw the attacking force are all dead, those that survived spent the next 5 hours digging themselves out.

"Well, that's that then. Best not get involved with these Charduni." She said, and started for her couch.

"My dear, if I stopped every time a roof caved in, I wouldn't be king and Calistia wouldn't be the most feared land in Scarn. The meeting will go as planned and Hallowfaust will still be mine, and the Charduni will be dealt with." He said, smiling at her as she turned.

"How?" she asked.

"Just have to be a little more monstrous my dear, that's all."